1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a computer system that facilitates the completion of work through the creation and reuse of an evolving set of frequently used tasks. The invention permits sharing the tasks, representing captured knowledge, with a plurality of other users. To increase the invention's awareness of the user's actions, a universal conversion module and a peripheral control module are provided to communicate the user's selection of various input output options.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For many years mobile users have had to suffer the hardship of carrying excessively heavy baggage “loaded to the nines” with so called “portable” peripherals. These peripherals, while being portable collectively, still represent an uncomfortable weight. A significant proportion of the weight in any such peripheral is generally represented by power supply, either in the form of batteries or power supply adapters.
For those traveling on an international level, this burden is increased by the need to carry additional converters, which alter the power connector format of peripherals to match that of the domestic power supply of the country being visited. A European user traveling in Europe and certain other parts of the world has little extra burden. But one switching from the United States to Europe has a significant problem, namely how to supply devices which require 110VAC from a power supply equipped to feed 220VAC–240VAC. This typically means carrying additional step-down transformers in the guise of power converters.
Users that require portability often times do not require operation away from an electrical outlet. For example, business users simply move their laptop from the office to home and back again on a regular basis. However, the time involved in packing up all the power supplies and interconnecting cables often means that the whole thing is simply not worth the hassle, other than in extreme cases. As a result, the user will potentially carry the laptop home and leave the rest behind, reducing available functionality when reaching home.
When users are away from an electrical outlet, they often need the use of their portable computer, powered by batteries, for short periods of time. However, at those times, when the system is needed to operate away from the main power supply, typical peripherals such as printers, scanners, etc., even though such are designed to be easily transported, still require an electrical attachment to an outlet. At best, one or two peripherals have their own rechargeable batteries, but they again are a source of weight burden to the user.
What has not been addressed is the potential for utilizing the power supply, which can be furnished by the laptop computer itself. This can take two forms, firstly modern laptop computers are accompanied by a universal power supply, typically able to function from 90VAC to 250VAC, and secondly they are equipped with batteries that have an ever increasing life away from an electrical outlet.
There are not too many difficulties to overcome when drawing power from the universal power supply of a laptop computer, as the user is not really troubled by switching everything on when the laptop is switched on, and anyway everything would be switched off when the laptop power supply was disconnected from the electrical outlet. The real problems are encountered when trying to integrate the power supply requirements of all the connected peripherals such that they can all be powered from the laptop battery. Due to the light use of these peripherals, battery life would not be significantly affected, as long as the user remembered to constantly switch things off when they are no longer in use.
Many devices consists of power saving features by entering a standby mode, but several targeted at the laptop market appear to lack this functionality, and even in standby mode each peripheral still draws power so collectively the peripherals in standby still consume a proportion of battery capacity. Again, the only option for the user is to keep switching things on and off as their work flow progresses.
Power saving features seem to be focused at too large or too small a scale for the laptop user to benefit. For example, peripherals including monitors and printers typically have a standby mode which yields significant savings, and laptop devices consists of options for switching off specific chips, reducing the speed of the processor, e.g. INTEL SPEEDSTEP, but again these do not extend to manage external devices which are all potentially serviced from a single battery source.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,900, issued to Combs et al. on May 18, 1999, discloses a mobile client computer and power management architecture. This reference discloses an energy management control program having a plurality of cooperating components permitting a designer to choose from among a plurality of foci for energy management.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,796,982, issued to Iwami on Aug. 18, 1998, discloses a switching regulator, information processing apparatus and a control method for same. The switching regulator is controlled by a feedback voltage, which is selected to be of minimum value from amongst the various power lines present. Although this invention succeeds in minimizing output voltage based on a minimum required voltage from a plurality of feedback voltages, this invention fails to completely shut off voltage from a peripheral computer module not presently in use.
Another area of frustration for mobile users is communication and again some of these frustrations emanate from a lack of close integration. A modem which is completely self-contained in terms of having cellular capabilities (the same as a mobile phone) and land line capabilities such as any traditional modem for use by an IBM COMPATIBLE PC is not found in the prior art. Of course, many laptop modems have optional kits which permit connecting the laptop modem to the user's mobile phone, but then this restricts use of the phone to the task of laptop communication, and moreover the constant connection and disconnection of data cables.
Even if such connection problems are dismissed, when a user wishes to utilize a cellular modem, when typically the landline modem is the default for Web connections, the user must, with extreme care, manipulate system settings in order to instruct the laptop to utilize a cellular modem. When use of the cellular modem has ceased, then the settings must once again be manipulated to bring the landline modem back into operation. Prior art has not addressed the need of the user with respect to automatically switching between landline and cellular communication while simultaneously adjusting system settings to correspond with available communication methods.
A final source of difficulty is the lack of close integration of voice audio features when multiple modems are in use. This feature is supported by a surprisingly small number of modems. The difficulty here is the diverse range of audio levels encountered when switching from one modem to another, causing the user to constantly alter software volume controls.
Interference problems arise when a cellular modem, such as the SIEMENS M20T, is integrated with an audio device and both share a common power supply. For example, if the modem was connected with an in-car audio system, to facilitate integration between the voice-communication features of the modem and the audio inputs/outputs of the in-car audio system, due to the fact that both devices share a common power supply (namely the car battery), interference is known to travel along power connections shared by the two devices. Annoying interference bleeds from the cellular modem and manifests itself on the audio output of the device to which it is connected, thus audio quality and intelligibility are grossly affected.
The general trend in consumer electronics today is toward the integration of communicating and computing facilities into a single unit. Examples are laptops wirelessly connected to remote hosts (e.g. PDA/PC at home), personal communicators that combine a phone, an organizer, and many more functions into a single electronic device, etc. This integration of wireless communications and computing raises potential problems with Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC).
During wireless transmission, radiation from a transceiver interferes with the processors and other electronics in the computing section of the device. This is especially the case for high instantaneous power, discontinuous transmission as found in time division multiple access (TDMA) communications (e.g., GSM, D-AMPS, DECT). Transmission takes place in a burst format with short, but repetitive bursts with high energy levels. Cross-talk between the transceiver and the computing electronics will likely disturb the signal levels in the digital electronics, giving rise to errors in the computing process. Other access methods that use continuous transmission (FDMA, or CDMA) can use lower instantaneous power levels, which are less likely to interfere with the computing electronics.
During wireless reception, the transceiver is opened to receive the burst from the antenna. However, now any electromagnetic radiation from the computing electronics can disturb the reception. This is especially a problem in high-speed, digital electronics, where steep edges and spikes at the signal level transitions can produce considerable radiation. With the ever-increasing clock frequencies of digital electronics, radiation from the computing electronics to the receiving unit will become more and more of a problem, irrespective of the kind of access method used (TDMA, FDMA, CDMA, etc.).
If future integrated communications/computing devices continue to use TDMA wireless cellular communications now implemented worldwide, then an efficient means of suppressing the mutual interference between transceiver and computing electronics must be found.
One attempt to reduce such interference is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,037, issued to Haartsen on Nov. 24, 1998. This invention provides for an interference reduction in TDMA-communications/computing devices. First, an interrupt signal is sent from a transceiver to a computing device when the transceiver is about to transmit or receive information. In response to the interrupt signal, the computing device stacks current status and enters an interrupt routine; the computing device is then released from the interrupt routine after the information has been transmitted or received. Although this invention works to reduce the interference, because there is only an interrupt signal and not a complete isolation of the TDMA ground return from the Computer system ground return, an elimination of audio interference is not accomplished. Therefore, there exists a desire in the art for a novel circuit construct to reduce the effect of this unwanted noise by isolating the TDMA (e.g. GSM) ground return from the Computer system ground return.
In order to significantly ease the life of laptop users particularly when traveling, a single unified device is needed that integrates the power supply requirements of peripherals and improves the integration of cellular and landline communication while harmonizing audio features of integrated modems. This method is not presently found in the prior art.
System interoperability and data compatibility have long been an issue in the field of Information Technology. To answer this problem, utility vendors have produced devices that can translate information output from one program and change it into a form compatible with another, where the program may be a graphics system or word-processor and the like. However, these conversions are restricted in the number of types of output they can provide, basically because they were devised with a single purpose in mind, for example, to take a document from one word-processor and re-write it so it is compatible with another word processor, e.g. convert a WORD-PERFECT document so it can be loaded by MICROSOFT WORD.
When this software was developed, it was not envisaged to have the potential to be made part of a larger network of converters. Therefore, it is not easy for a user to take a document and pass it through successive conversion processes. In order to do this, a user typically has to load information into one device and execute the conversion process, then load the information into the next device and so on, until the final product is reached. This is beyond the capability of all but the most expert users.
During the 1990's, the emergence of the Web as a means of exchanging information has given rise to an explosion of data availability. This information is expressed in an immensely diverse manner. Due to the nature of the Web, little has been done to introduce standards, which are widely adopted by information authors, other than HTML.
Technologies and standards such as XML provide a means of transmitting information where the information contains a description of the format of its content. Day-to-day web explorers will seldom come into face-to-face contact with information in this form, as it is generally used as a means of providing interoperability between web based systems.
A more widely understood method of transmitting information using an easily recognizable format is to add a file extension to the end of the filename. For example, a document called “Sales Report” will typically have an extension of “DOC” giving a total filename of “SalesReport.DOC”. Many users seeing this filename will immediately assume it is a MICROSOFT WORD document, if they are using the WINDOWS operating system, but other users of systems such as APPLE MAC would naturally assume that the information was formatted for their use.
For these reasons, confusion occurs so the ever increasing need for users to exchange information on a corporate as well as global scale lacks truly universal support.
Some current art is designed to integrate with other devices, the most common example being a speech recognition package, such as DRAGON NATURALLY SPEAKING integrating with MICROSOFT WORD for the purpose of allowing a user to dictate documents. However, the close integration of such devices is rare and examples of voice driven systems are currently rare, in terms of day-to-day use by a reasonable number of users. However, such devices are ideal input methods, which enable a user to collect information. What is needed is a means of forwarding the collected information to other devices, which can usefully manipulate the information. This, again, causes us to return to the core problem of compatibility and the user needing to know how to render the information compatible with other devices.
One surprising example, described in further detail during the detailed discussion of the related drawings, is a particular web service that can translate text in English to either Spanish or French, but may lack the ability to translate from Spanish to French and vice versa. The use of an inter-lingua, such as English, is known. However, the quality of multi-step translations executed in this manner while far from perfect, are still perfectly understandable.
One only has to examine the work of the JPEG group, which provided a method of compressing photographic images, to see that an over zealous compression, while eliminating much of the source information, can still render an image that is easily recognizable, even though the size of the resultant data file containing the image has been significantly reduced. Similarly, AUDIO CODECS, which can provide a means of compressing and decompressing audio information, can speed up the transmission of audio signals by reducing quality. Again, the point here is that the information when received is still intelligible by its human recipient. Therefore, translations, conversions and the like which employ “lossy compression” are easily paralleled with multi-step conversion processes where some sensibility is lost, but the usefulness to the user remains substantially unaffected.
While a static language inter-lingua is known, a dynamic universal “inter-lingua” that permits conversion from a spoken Italian message to an ADOBE ACROBAT English message involving many steps and various “inter-lingua” intermediaries yet requiring only a one initial step by the user is not known in the prior art.
The theory of self-actualization hypothesizes that a human's normal behavior is to satisfy the basic needs of food and shelter first, and then to move on to satisfy more complicated needs. As soon as complicated needs are fully satisfied, a human can then move to a state of self-actualization, which is to become all that a human is capable of being. Self-actualization is a difficult process. In fact, most humans never reach self-actualization, in part, because of their inability to utilize the entire capacity of the brain coupled with the demands of fulfilling basic needs first.
A machine that can assist a human toward self-actualization is not known in the prior art. However, if a computer could learn the user's procedures utilized to satisfy basic need, and assist in that need directed process through enhancement of the senses and intellect, the computer would increase the speed at which the user could grow and self-actualize.
Thus, by definition such a computer would self-administer to the user. By functioning essentially as the user's virtual representative, a digital stand-in, the computer is the user's alter ego . . . keeping track of and performing the user's tasks whether simple or complex, either with or without the direct involvement of the user.
Thus, a symbiotic relationship is created. The virtual representative learns from the user through analysis of daily tasks, which are constantly recorded and analyzed, such that the procedures selected by the user to fulfill basic needs become evident. In this way, the user and the virtual together, would be able to accomplish a substantial increase in the number and complexity of tasks per day that otherwise could not be accomplished with the user's unassisted abilities and time constraints.
The abilities of the virtual would grow with the user. As the user grows and becomes more experienced, so would the virtual. Additionally, if the virtual is able to find more efficient methods for the completion of tasks, the move towards self-actualization would thus be accelerated.
Typically, 80% of a user's work is accomplished through repeated use of only 20% of their software's available features. This is commonly referred to as Pareto's Rule, with the 20% commonly referred to as the “vital few”.
The current state of the art has attempted to a much lesser degree to fulfill a user's need for fast and efficient access to frequently used procedures. However, the prior art incorrectly attempts to solve this problem by creating macros, icons, unfamiliar gesture systems, scripting languages and the like.
One attempt to correct this problem is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,167, issued to von Cruyningen on Sep. 8, 1998. This patent discloses a popup menu with directional gestures. Using this invention's capabilities, the computer operator can design menus containing most frequently used commands and use these menus with existing applications without revising the applications. Thus, menus with many items are managed by scrolling or by progressive disclosure of the menu items. Although this invention allows for user-specific menu options, the inherent problem still exists; the user must design these menus using their “vital few”. Where the user will only be able to create these custom menus using their “vital few”, the remaining 80% of the software's capabilities, including those capabilities that may dramatically increase the user's efficiency, will be unknown to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,413, issued to Beauregard on Oct. 26, 1999, discloses a semantic user interface, wherein a user is allowed to enter “commands” in his/her everyday natural language in order to control the operations of the computer. All commands are language-based and user-defined. These commands can be entered from any context of the user's computer (any application or operating system workspace). The commands allow a user to launch applications and navigate within applications by using language rather than clicks from a pointing device such as a mouse. It also allows the replacement of keystrokes with stored words or keystrokes. The system also keeps a complete archival record of all the text content the user provides as input, regardless of which application program or operating system window the user is operating in at the time. The combined set of all user defined commands and the memory of all the input text that is stored in the archive constitutes the personality profile and is transportable from one computer to another. However, as the personality profile is unique to each user, it is not a standardized form capable of transferring expertise across an international group of users utilizing disparate software packages.
Technicians have for many years sought artificial intelligence, which is without doubt the “Holy Grail” of the field of information technology. Artificial intelligence generally attempts to deliver a method of building a system that “thinks”.
Automation is shown in many forms of prior art. The most popular of these, in modern software, is referred to as a macro. The user identifies in advance that a particular sequence of keystrokes, mouse clicks and the like, are likely to be frequently executed. The user then indicates to the system in use that macro recording is to begin, and after the sequence of keystrokes and other inputs is complete indicates that recording is to end. If a keystroke is omitted the user has little choice but to begin the recording process all over again, hopefully not making any mistakes on the next attempt.
This form of macro is inflexible, and is merely a “parrot style” system of repeating input to a system. There is often no flexibility to apply a macro in combination with other macros or with other forms of input, or even to vary the use of the macro in any sense. The next problem arises when users try to remember how to trigger macros. Often they are assigned to obscure combinations of key presses, such as CTRL-C and CTRL-V, system defined macros which copy and paste items. There are no set rules or even many recommendations as to how macros should be organized on one's keyboard.
Predefined macros such as CTRL-C and CTRL-V, as described above, often contain many strange and disturbing inconsistencies, which frustrate the novice user. For example, MICROSOFT WORD has a predefined macro for centralizing text by pressing CTRL-E, but this same combination does not centralize text in MICROSOFT EXCEL, rather when CTRL-E is pressed in MICROSOFT EXCEL an uninformative bleep is emitted by the software. So, inconsistent organization and application of macros is evident in current art.
Systems have also been suggested and devised which are operable by instructions issued in plain English, not very helpful for speakers of other languages. However, this is still a move in the right direction, i.e. closer to the domain of the user and away from the domain of computer jargon and confusing screen layouts.
Customizable screens are now the mode in all modern software comprising toolbars, yet another task that the user has to do before a personalized and ergonomic system becomes available. The most frustrating aspect of toolbar customizations is that they are not carried from application to application. Again, MICROSOFT WORD carries many toolbars that the user can fine tune, or the user can even create empty toolbars and arrange commonly used tools one by one to appear on them. However, when moving to other MICROSOFT programs the same toolbar cannot be employed, despite the fact that many identical buttons exist in related programs. The user has to repeat the steps of customization all over again, in the case of every application in use, a task, which most users will find intolerable.
An interesting development, which came further into public view in the year 2000, was the work occurring in the field of OPEN AGENT ARCHITECTURE. This art proposes an expandable collection of agents, each having special abilities, which operates under the control of a governing device, which acts as an interface between the user and the collection of agents. The user expresses a desire to have a task completed and the agents are described as being organized in order to fulfill the goal of the task. This requires that the user makes the task request on each occasion and no form of expertise appears to be captured or learned by the collection of agents.
Another trend, popular in modern software, is that the software should consists of a specialist programming language which users are expected to learn in order to extend the functionality of the software in use. This is obviously time consuming and therefore, beyond the scope of novice users and those not concerned with programming in general. However, the inclusion of VISUAL BASIC FOR APPLICATIONS, MACRO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES, JAVA SCRIPTS and the like have all been created at some time or another to plug a gap. That gap is special to every user, which operates a software package, in other words it is impossible for any software system to cater for all the specialist needs of 100% of the user base. It is extremely likely that less than 5% of users utilize such programming features, leaving the other 95% to share the cost of developing those features not utilized by the majority.
Many users have tried and failed to automate their software using the aforementioned art, resulting in junk accumulating within their software, in the form of abandoned macros, forgotten code snippets and the like, being accrued in the software to which they relate.
The next group of prior art related to the invention is that of task scheduling. This traditionally involves executing a computer program, such as a virus scan followed by a backup, at predetermined times. The scheduling process will happily allow the backup program to execute, even though the virus scan found a virus. This situation is clearly undesirable in the eyes of any computer operator. Execution schedulers are, therefore, found to be unsuitable in automating the day-to-day tasks of users, over and above those that execute once per day etc.
Users above all else tend to face an ever-growing learning curve as burgeoning software, unkindly referred to by the computer press as bloat-ware. More and more features are added in order to out-do the competition in a features war. This does the user no favors at all and just leads to ever increasing sequences of dialogs, more “are you sure” message boxes and increasingly large drop down lists of fonts, font sizes, and other information which must be sifted through in order to find the desired option.
Some art is adopting a “most used appears first” philosophy for lists. For example, commonly used fonts are placed at the top a list, as opposed to being in alphabetical order. This is used so rarely as to be inconsistent and, therefore, increases user frustration as this rather desirable feature now appears out of place. Users are not able to restrict the number of choices in system-defined lists and are often not able to assign default values. What would be more useful is if the context of work defined which tools and which options were available, and in what order they are displayed. Users would then be presented with a more refined interface, sensitive to context and responsive to their unique patterns of work.
Therefore, a self-adapting, self-optimizing system, that constantly records and optimizes tasks and their related tools and options, comprising a method of sharing expertise, while providing a way to automatically re-enact any task(s), according to desired options and external constraints, is not found in the art.